My parents have some life-long friends named Nick and JoBeth. They all grew up together and married about the same time. Their kids were friends with my sister and me. Nick died a few years ago but my mom still tells the bread story.
Shortly after they married JoBeth started making Nick homemade bread every day. Every day she’d get out the mixing bowl, flour, yeast, water, and other ingredients. Every day she’d mix the ingredients, knead the dough, let it rise, and then bake it. Every day she’d set before Nick a fresh, hot, homemade loaf of bread. He didn’t have to spread the butter, it would just melt across the slice.
One day, after a few weeks of being married and many loaves of bread, Nick said, “JoBeth, I really prefer store-bought white bread. Could you just buy some white bread from the store?”
Here’s why I think that connects to today’s gospel (John 6:35, 41-51). Jesus is making a distinction between living bread and manna. I sort of imagine the difference between the two as being like the difference between fresh, hot, homemade bread and store-bought white bread.
Each serves a purpose but they are two very different kinds of bread. You can survive on manna – for a while – but it is living bread that nourishes, feeds, and gives life.
Why do we continue to eat manna when the bread of life is being offered us? Why do we settle for store-bought white bread when fresh, hot, homemade bread is being placed before us?
I think those are a couple of questions that run through today’s gospel. I think they are the questions behindJesus saying, “I am the bread of life.” “Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died.” “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever.”
He’s inviting us to reflect on the bread we are eating. What is feeding and nourishing your life today? Are you thriving or are you just surviving?
Haven’t there been times when you ate your fill – whether at the kitchen table or the table of life – but you weren’t satisfied? You were full but not fulfilled. Haven’t you sometimes gotten up and walked away from the table thinking or saying to yourself, “I ate but it wasn’t that good or what I really wanted?” Or maybe you’ve gotten up from the table still feeling hungry.
I know what that’s like. I suppose you do too. It’s all the times we settled for dead bread instead of living bread, manna instead of the bread of life, store-bought white bread instead of fresh homemade bread. We ate but were still hungry.
When has that happened to you? What was going on? We are hungry people and that hunger is in all aspects of our lives. We hunger in our spirituality and our life of prayer; in our marriages, families, and relationships; in how we respond to conflict and injustice; the ways we deal with our own pain or the pain of another; in our work and day to day life; in our search for meaning and purpose. And yet, we’re often too ready and willing to settle for manna, store.
Our emptiness and hunger for bread are real. Jesus knows that. He also knows they are about more than filling the stomach. That hunger is also about our hearts, souls, and minds. It’s about a quality of life that fulfills more than a quantity that fills our life.
I wonder what your deep hunger is today. What is the hunger that eats and gnaws at your life? What is the emptiness that aches in your life today? What parts of your life are malnourished or undernourished? What are your relationships starving for? Feel the grumbling of your hunger. Name your hunger.
What are you feeding that hunger these days? Are you eating the bread of life or settling for manna?
Those two options describe two ways of being and living. It’s a choice we make every day. We can go to the store and buy some white bread or we can be fed with the bread of life.
When I speak about the bread of life I am talking about more than the eucharist. And I think Jesus is too. I don’t want to take anything away from the eucharist and I’m not denying that the eucharist can be and is bread of life but what if it’s just one slice in a larger loaf of bread?
Look at some of the other ways Jesus fed and nourished the lives of people:
- He was present. He listened. He loved. He welcomed and connected with people.
- He told stories about life and helped people find meaning.
- He offered mercy and forgiveness.
- He was compassionate. He touched the hurting and broken places in people’s lives.
- He offered a vision for a new life and a different way of being in the world.
- He reminded people to not be afraid and to not let their hearts be troubled.
- He gave hope and the kind of peace that the world cannot give.
- He reminded us that we are one bread, one body, and our neighbor’s life matters as much as our own.
- He assured us that regardless of who were are, where we’re from, or what we’ve done, we all have a seat at the table.
Jesus made himself a part of the living bread he offered others in the same way JoBeth invested and put herself – her time, work, commitment, and love –in every loaf of bread she baked.That’s the kind of bread I want to eat, don’t you?
What’s keeping you from eating the bread of life today? What would it take to leave the store-bought bread on the shelf and choose living bread? And what if we are not only to eat the bread of life but also to become the bread of life for others?
I think we often hear Jesus say, “I am the bread of life,” and assume he is the only loaf in the basket. But what if he’s not? What about us? What if Jesus isn’t claiming to be the exclusive loaf of bread in this world? What if he is showing us what living bread looks like so we can find it in this world, so we can become that bread, so we can share the bread of our lives with others?
Have you ever been given a starter batch of sourdough? It holds the potential to become bread, to feed and nourish. And it’s meant to be shared. What if Jesus is the starter batch in us? What if rather than making an exclusive claim about himself Jesus is giving us the recipe to become as he is, to become living bread for the life of the world? What if that’s how God works in the world? Something in us gets leavened, becomes bread, and hunger is fed; ours as well as another’s.
Store-bought white bread or fresh, hot, butter-melting, homemade bread. We choose. Living bread or manna, the choice is ours.
If you want life eat the bread of life. If you want to bring life to another become the bread of life.
And don’t forget, “You are what you eat.”
